I assume that you have a very good reason for purchasing this book; most
people don't buy a title like Financial Accounting For Dummies on a whim
in the bookstore. Most likely, you're taking your first financial accounting
class and want to be sure you pass it, but perhaps you're a business owner
wanting to get a better handle on financial statement preparation. Whatever
your motivation, this chapter is your jumping board into the pool of financial
accounting.

I explain what financial accounting is and why it's so important to many different
individuals and businesses. I spell out the various users of financial
accounting data and explain why they need that data. Finally, I briefly introduce
four all-important characteristics of financial accounting: relevance,
reliability, comparability, and consistency. Whether you're a financial
accounting student or a business owner, you need to understand these crucial
financial accounting terms from the very beginning.

Knowing the Purposes of
Financial Accounting

Broadly speaking, accounting is the process of organizing facts and figures
and relaying the result of that organization to any interested customers of
the information. This process doesn't just relate to numbers spit out by a
computer software program; it pertains to any type of reconciliation.

Here's an example from my own life of accounting that doesn't involve numbers
or money: A teenager slinks in after curfew, and his parent asks for a
complete accounting of why he is late. When the teenager tells the facts,
you have information (his car broke down in an area with no cell coverage),
the individual producing the information (our mischievous teen), and the
interested customer, also known as the user of the information (the worried
parent).

The subject of this book, financial accounting, is a subset of accounting.
Financial accounting involves the process of preparing financial statements
for a business. (Not sure what financial statements are? No worries — you
find an overview of them in the next section.) Here are the key pieces of the
financial accounting process:

Information: Any accounting transactions taking place within the business
during the accounting period. This includes generating revenue from the
sales of company goods or services, paying business-related expenses,
buying company assets, and incurring debt to run the company.

Business entity: The company incurring the accounting transactions.

Users: The persons or businesses that need to see the accounting transactions
organized into financial statements to make educated decisions
of their own. (More about these users in the "Getting to Know Financial
Accounting Users" section of this chapter.)

Preparing financial statements

If you're taking a financial accounting class, your entire course is centered
on the proper preparation of financial statements: the income sheet, balance
sheet, and statement of cash flows. Financial accountants can't just
stick accounting transaction data on the statements wherever they feel like.
Many, many rules exist that dictate how financial accountants must organize
the information on the statements; these rules are called generally accepted
accounting principles (GAAP), and I discuss them in Chapter 4. The rules pertain
to both how the financial accountant shows the accounting transactions
and on which financial statements the information relating to the transactions
appears.

Curious about the purpose of each financial statement? (I know the mystery

is eating at you!) Here's the scoop on each:

Income statement: This financial statement shows the results of business
operations consisting of revenue, expenses, gains, and losses. The
end product is net income or net loss. I talk about the income statement
again in Chapter 3, and then I cover it from soup to nuts in Chapter 10.

For now (because I know the excitement is too much for you!), here are
the basic facts on the four different income statement components:
 Revenue: Gross receipts earned by the company selling its goods
or services.
 Expenses: The costs to the company to earn the revenue.
 Gains: Income from non-operating-related transactions, such as
selling a company asset.
 Losses: The flip side of gains, such as losing money when selling
the company car.

REMEMBER
A lot of non-accountants call the income statement a statement of profit
or loss or simply a P&L. These terms are fine to use because they
address the spirit of the statement.

Balance sheet: This statement has three sections: assets, liabilities, and
equity. Standing on their own, these sections contain valuable information
about a company. However, a user has to see all three interacting
together on the balance sheet to form an opinion approaching reliability
about the company.
Part III of this book is all about the balance sheet, but for now here are
the basics about each balance sheet component:
 Assets: Resources owned by a company, such as cash, equipment,
and buildings.
 Liabilities: Debt the business incurs for operating and expansion
purposes.
 Equity: The amount of ownership left in the business after deducting
total liabilities from total assets.

Statement of cash flows: This statement contains certain components
of both the income statement and the balance sheet. The purpose of the
statement of cash flows is to show cash sources and uses during a specific
period of time — in other words, how a company brings in cash and
for what costs the cash goes back out the door.

Showing historic performance

The information reflected on the financial statements allows its users to evaluate
whether they want to become financially involved with the company.
But the financial statement users cannot make educated decisions based
solely on one set of financial statements. Here's why:

The income statement is finite in what it reflects. For example, it may
report net income for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2012.
This means any accounting transactions taking place prior to or after
this 12-month window do not show up on the report.

The statement of cash flows is also finite in nature, showing cash ins and
outs only for the reporting period.

While the balance sheet shows results from the first day the company opens
to the date on the balance sheet, it doesn't provide a complete picture of the
company's operations. All three financial statements are needed to paint that
picture.

REMEMBER

Savvy financial statement users know that they need to compare several
years' worth of financial statements to get a true sense of business performance.
Users employ tools such as ratios and measurements involving financial
statement data (a topic I cover in Chapter 14) to evaluate the relative
merit of one company over another by analyzing each company's historic
performance.

Providing results for the annual report

After all the hoopla of preparing the financial statements, publicly traded
companies (those whose stock and bonds are bought and sold in the open
market) employ independent certified public accountants (CPAs) to audit
the financial statements for their inclusion in reports to the shareholders.
The main thrust of a company's annual report is not only to provide financial
reporting but also to promote the company and satisfy any regulatory
requirements.

The preparation of an annual report is a fairly detailed subject that your
financial accounting professor will review only briefly in class. Your financial
accounting textbook probably contains an annual report for an actual company,
which you'll use to complete homework assignments. I provide a more
expansive look at annual reports in Chapter 16.

Getting to Know Financial
Accounting Users

Well, who are these inquisitive financial statement users I've been referring
to so far in this chapter? If you've ever purchased stock or invested money
in a retirement plan, you number among the users. In this section, I explain
why certain groups of people and businesses need access to reliable financial
statements.

Identifying the most likely users

Financial statement users fall into three categories:

Existing or potential investors in the company's stocks or bonds.

Individuals or businesses thinking about extending credit terms to the
company. Examples of creditors include banks, automobile financing
companies, and the vendors from which a company purchases its inventory
or office supplies.

Governmental agencies, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), which want to make sure the company is fairly presenting
its financial position. (I discuss the history and role of the SEC in
Chapter 4.)

And what other governmental agency is particularly interested in whether a
company employs any hocus pocus when preparing its financial statements?
The Internal Revenue Service, of course, because financial statements are the
starting point for reporting taxable income.

Recognizing their needs

REMEMBER

All three categories of financial statement users share a common need: They
require assurance that the information they are looking at is both materially
correct and useful. Materially correct means the financial statements don't
contain any serious or substantial misstatements. In order to be useful, the
information has to be understandable to anyone not privy to the day-to-day
activities of the company.

Investors and creditors, though sitting at different ends of the table, have
something else in common: They are looking for a financial return in
exchange for allowing the business to use their cash. Governmental agencies,
on the other hand, don't have a profit motive for reviewing the financial statements;
they just want to make sure the company is abiding by all tax codes,
regulations, or generally accepted accounting principles.

Providing information for
decision-making

REMEMBER

The onus is on financial accountants to make sure a company's financial statements
are materially correct. Important life decisions may hang in the balance
based on an individual investing in one stock versus another. Don't believe
me? Talk to any individual close to retirement age who lost his or her whole
nest egg in the Enron debacle.

Two of the three groups of financial statement users are making decisions
based on those statements: investors and creditors.

Creditors look to the financial statements to make sure a potential debtor has
the cash flow and potential future earnings to pay back both principal and
interest according to the terms of the loan.

Investors fall into two groups:

Those looking for growth: These investors want the value of a stock to
increase over time. Here's an example of growth at work: You do some
research about a little-known company that is poised to introduce a
hot new computer product into the market. You have $1,000 sitting in
a checking account that bears no interest. You believe, based on your
research, that if you purchase some stock in this company now, you'll
be able to sell the stock for $2,000 shortly after the company releases
the computer product.

Those looking for income: These investors are satisfied with a steady
stock that weathers ebbs and flows in the market. The stock neither
increases nor decreases in value per share by an enormous amount,
but it pays a consistent, reasonable dividend. (Keep in mind that reasonableness
varies for each person and his or her investment income
goals.)

Remember that there are two ways to make money: the active way (you
work to earn money) and the passive way (you invest money to make more
money). Passive is better, no? The wise use of investing allows individuals to
make housing choices, educate their children, and provide for their retirement.
And wise investment decisions can be made only when potential investors
have materially correct financial statements for the businesses in which
they're considering investing.

Now that you understand who uses financial accounting information, I want
to discuss the substantive characteristics of that information. If financial
accountants don't assure that financial statement information has these characteristics,
the statements aren't worth the paper on which they're printed.

The information a company provides must be relevant, reliable, comparable,
and consistent. In this section, I define what each characteristic means.

Relevance

Relevance is a hallmark of good evidence; it means the information directly
relates to the facts you're trying to evaluate or understand. The inclusion
or absence of relevant information has a definite effect on a user's decisionmaking
process.

Relevant information has predictive value, which means it helps a user look
into the future. By understanding and evaluating the information, the user
can form an opinion as to how future company events may play out. For
example, comparing financial results from prior years, which are gleaned
from the financial statements, can give investors an idea as to the future
value of a company's stock. If assets and revenue are decreasing while liabilities
are increasing, you have a pretty good indicator that investing in this
company may not be such a hot idea.

Relevant information also has feedback value, which means that new relevant
information either confirms or rebuts the user's prior expectations.
For example, you review a company's financial statements for 2012, and your
analysis indicates that the company's sales should increase two-fold in the
subsequent year. When you later check out the 2013 income statement, the
company's gross receipts have, indeed, doubled. Woohoo! With the relevant
information in hand, you see that your prediction came true.

REMEMBER

Timeliness goes hand in hand with relevance. The best and most accurate
information in the world is of no use if it's no longer applicable because so
such time has elapsed that facts and circumstances have changed. Look at
it this way: If you were in the market to replace your flat-screen TV, and you
found out about a killer sale at the local electronics store the day after the
sale ended, this information is utterly useless to you. The same thing is true
with financial information. That's why the SEC requires publicly traded companies
to issue certain reports as soon as 60 days after the end of the financial
period. (See Chapter 16 for more about this reporting requirement.)

Reliability

Reliability means you can depend on the information to steer you in the right
direction. For example, the information must be free from material misstatements
(meaning it doesn't contain any serious or substantial mistakes). It also
has to be reasonably free from bias, which means the information is neutral
and not slanted to produce a rosier picture of how well the company is doing.

Here's an example of how a company would create biased financial statements.
Say that a company has a pending lawsuit that it knows will likely
damage its reputation (and, therefore, its future performance). In the financial
statements, the company does not include a note that mentions the
lawsuit. The company is not being neutral in this situation; it is deliberately
painting a rosier picture than actually exists. (See Chapter 15 for my explanation
of the purpose of financial statement notes.)